Transitioning from the 1970s to the 1980s in Car Advertising

This ad for this Datsun 280ZX seems the perfect photo to illustrate the jump from the 1970s to the 1980s. The fashion is a mix of both decades as is the yacht/marina background.

I am not sure what to make of this unlikely couple flanking the car. I guess he is just the guy working on the boat. People don’t know his name, but they affectionately refer to him as “The Captain.” He is taking some time to admire this magnificent Datsun before transporting it to some exotic island off the coast of California where it is always summer and Loggins & Messina rock a waterfront bar nightly.

6 thoughts on “Transitioning from the 1970s to the 1980s in Car Advertising”

This was my car in high school. Well mine was blue and silver and it and a set of factory installed louvers but yeah an 81 Datsun 280ZX. I had a lot of fun with that car driving around with the t-tops off, when I could of course I did live in Washington

The whole late 70s/early 80s “thing” has long been a favorite subject of mine, since that was a particularly wonderful period of my childhood. The “80s” as we know them didn’t really come into being own until some time in 1982. 1980/1981 were for all intents and purposes still a part of the 1970s, both culturally and aesthetically. If you go back and examine an old catalog or TV show from 1980, it will truly look, sound and “feel” much more like something from 1975 than 1985, for instance. I guess the same thing can be said about the very early parts of most “modern” decades, going all the way back to the 1920s, at least.

By the way, that Marina looks an awful lot like the the one near Ponch’s apartment in later seasons of CHiPs!

I somehow just discovered this site (after years of enjoying the somewhat similarly themed Plaid Stallions), and have really enjoyed going back through the archives here. I also grew up in New Jersey, so the locally themed pieces are particularly entertaining.

No, I left NJ 20 years ago for the wilds of interior Alaska and have never returned. I still have cousins and friends in the area, through. I grew up in Glen Ridge, in Essex county (and Lake Wallenpaupack, PA, where I spent my summers at our family’s summer house). Although I’m very far away now, I still kind of obsess over how the area was back in my 70s/80s childhood.

I know Glen Ridge (I am from Hudson County). I went to Lake Wallenpaupack a bunch of time as a kid, had not thought about that in a while. NJ to Alaska is a big change. Hopefully, even after 20 years, you are doing your duty as a New Jerseyian and complaining about how people don’t know how to make pizza where you are now. :)

Oh man, the pizza situation here is (and has always been) dire indeed. My favorite NJ pizza was probably from the Star Tavern in Orange. Dodgy neighborhood (there were always rumpled drunks in there who looked like they were extras from a bar scene in the Rockford Files), but great pizza.

That’s amazing that you went to Wallenpaupack! Not to go on forever here, but maybe you’ll remember some of the now-vanished places that existed there back then? Such as:

Lakeville Market (always called “Winterle’s” by locals)
Gateway Diner (greatest breakfast food ever)
The Char Bar/Polar Bear (barbecue/burger joint that transformed into an awesome video arcade/miniature golf place in the late ’70s before shutting down around the mid 80s).